So many with a claim on Pablo Neruda still, so many wanting
the truth.

Pero sabes de dónde viene

la muerte, de arriba o de abajo?

But do you know from where death

comes, from above or from below?

[XXXVII]

Now we know for sure that while writing all of these Spanish
words he was suffering from cancer, these words that are the lines of his final
long poem.

Por qué anduvimos tanto tiempo

creciendo para separarnos?

Why did we spend so much time

growing up only to separate?

[XLIV]

Everyone has their own Pablo Neruda, politicians and
historians and readers and rivals and friends and family and strangers.

Cuando ya se fueron los huesos

quién vive en el polvo final?

Now that the bones are gone

who lives in the final dust?

[LXII]

Each with their own questions needing firm and conclusive
answers. While Pablo Neruda, as he sat through what were to be his final months
alive, made up a poem consisting only of questions.

Quién trabaja más en la tierra,

el hombre o el sol cereal?

Who works harder on earth,

a human or the grain’s sun?

[LXXIII]

Questions that hint at the answer and how the answer cannot
be firm or conclusive. How the answer is, like the question, a lead to further
questions.

Verdad que parece esperar

el Otoño que pase algo?

Is it true that autumn seems to wait

for something to happen?

[LXXIV]

And when Pablo Neruda asks questions like this we sense that
something is impending, something we will have to accept, even though we don’t
know what it is. It could be upheaval or loss or change of some kind.

Qué sigue pagando el Otoño

con tantodinero amarillo?

What does autumn go on paying for

with so much yellow money?

[XI]

The Chilean Government this year ordered the exhumation of
the remains of Pablo Neruda and the autopsy confirms that the poet had prostate
cancer at the time of his death, with extended metastasis.

Ayer, ayer dije a mis ojos

cuándo volveremos a vernos?

Yesterday, yesterday I asked my eyes

when will we see each other again?

[XXII]

The rumours of forty years ago are fresh on the internet. At
the time of the coup in 1973 Pablo Neruda planned to escape to Mexico. He had
lived in exile before.

Y qué me dio por transmigrar

si viven en Chile mis huesos?

And why did I decide to migrate

if my bones live in Chile?

[XXXI]

While Pablo Neruda pursued poetry his whole life, he was
also committed to a cause. Pablo Neruda was human: one day he was going to die.
It could be next week.

Es el orden o la batalla

este quebranto sucesivo?

Is this continual breaking

the order or the battle?

[LIII]

Whether or not he knew he was going to die twelve days after
the coup, he stayed by the ocean where his house was located and made up a poem
made entirely of questions. Question sentences were the single grammatical
construction, the form, he chose to write his long poem of seventy-four cantos.

Has pensado de qué color

es el Abril de los enfermos?

For the diseased, what colour

do you think April is?

[XXIV]

Alone with all his thoughts, closer still for Pablo Neruda
is the knowledge of mortality.

Y cómo el invierno acumula

tantos azules lineales?

[Have you noticed] how winter collects

so many layers of blue?

[XVII]

There was so little time and maybe the poem was not even
completed. Events press in as he tries to handle daily tasks, like his health
and the emerging political situation and his next poem.

Se fundirá tu destrucción

en otra voz y en otra luz?

Will your destruction merge

with another voice and other light?

[XXXVI]

All the Spanish lines are from Pablo Neruda’s book poem ‘El
Libro de las Preguntas’. The translations are by William O’Daly, published
under the title ‘The Book of Questions’ (Port Townsend, Washington, Copper
Canyon Press, c1991).

Members of Chile's Medical Legal Service in April 2013 digging up the grave of Chilean poet Pablo Neruda in Isla Negra.